


Staring down at your wounded beauty

by lilylilym



Category: Winner (Band)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-26
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 17:05:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6123514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilylilym/pseuds/lilylilym
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Song Minho returned to Seoul after 2 years of military service just in time for Christmass to find himself walking the streets alone. Phonecalls to exes lead him to a familiar bar and a strange conversation with someone he thought he knew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

#  

 

 

_____________________________

 _Mother, mother_  
who am I? If he  
will just come back once  
and kiss me on the face  
his coarse hair brush  
my temple, it’s throbbing!

_then I can put on my clothes  
I guess, and walk the streets._

 

  
**one**

 

  
It is that time of a year, again. Sleepless Seoul is turned up by thousands of light strings at the malls, accompanied by Christmas music in every street corner. Song Minho doesn’t remember the last time he saw these many peoples in such colorful outfits being in the same place. Funny, here they have the freedom to actually talk to each other without facing disciplines, yet nobody chooses to. Everyone is either gluing their face to their smart phone or stuffing their ears with headphones while avoiding eye contact with everyone. It’s like if someone can materialize “communication” into an object, it would belong to a museum now. People would buy tickets to see it, all by themselves, take pictures of it from countless angles, and post into their choices of social media outlet, with such hashtags as #reminiscence, #backtothefuture, #memorylane. Some would even be so bold to add a caption that they “used to have communication back in their day,” so that the youngsters can vote down and comment something like, “lol tell me if it’s true @dinosaur.” Exhibitions that portray the linearization of communication would go something like, “premodern communication,” “contemporary communication,” or even “dystopian/apocalyptic communication.” _So pathetic._ Song Minho thought to himself as he passes by yet another person with stooped back and tensed shoulders, holding their phone so close to their face. But he isn’t really in a position to judge. After two years of service, Minho comes back to Seoul like a stranger in the city, who finds himself lost amongst the familiarity of this place. He doesn’t really have a place to return to – or rather, he doesn’t want to return to the family that rejects him in the first place.

So, at times like this, when people – despite how disconnected they seem on the streets – rush back home to join families and loved ones, Minho realizes a fact which he didn’t have to confront during the last two years in service: he doesn’t have a home. There are no options other than wandering around the street with his backpack on, checking his phone to find an inn where he can stay temporarily. Back then, he was never that financial stable to get a mortgage, so his last apartment was rented. And after breaking up with his partner right before joining the military, Minho lost the apartment too. If he would have remembered then, that he didn’t co-sign the apartment but only chip in the rent, he wouldn’t have packed all his stuff and left abruptly like that. But again, packing was way too easy - all he had was only a bag of clothing, two pairs of shoes, a laptop, a pair of expensive headphones, some collections of vintage vinyl records, and a box of miscellaneous stuff. He brought everything with him to the military.

“I should have known you’re a fuckboy.” His partner had yelled at him when she threw his precious records out the window. Minho could have gone to hell and back and would still not raise his voice at her – he _adored_ Clesias. If everything he asked for in a partner could be combined into one figure – that would be her. Tender, kind-hearted, educated, caring, responsible, respectful, beautiful – those are a few words on top of his head if anyone asks him why he liked her in the first place. _But not my records, woman, they are my babies._ Clesias’s only weakness – the fatal one – was that she would hit where it hurts the most whenever she’s pissed – just because in everyday life she’s also that much considerate. Minho didn’t learn his lesson after the first time she dropped his PS4 into the bathtub. They both love Jesus but only on that day he got to truly understand just how much damage Judas could have done to Him. So, she must be right – he must have been a fuckboy, for shaking a woman such as herself and making her do something that distasteful. _Still, not my babies, woman._ He didn’t remember what the fight was about, but he remembered hastily packing everything up in twenty minutes; the whole time, Clesias was right next to him screaming about how he ruined her adult life. She was talking about their joint bank accounts and their shared pet, Johnny. [“Who named their cat Johnny anyway? I can’t believe I let you name him when YOU are the one who will be leaving him behind!” But let’s be honest, if he would have brought Johnny and the only one left was her, it wouldn’t have been cute.] Or that the decent-sized one bedroom apartment that they lived in was the best economical effort from both of them; let’s face it, if he was leaving, she would have had no other choice but to leave as well. _No shit, not my babies, Satan._ He ran off the door without saying a word – like that was the one thing that he _yearned_ for. Perhaps it was.

Song Minho was twenty eight then. Clesias was the last committed relationship he was in before joining the military. Minho had always been in a relationship. He was the type that could never stay alone, and one of those lucky souls whose puberty treated them well. He wasn’t the most popular boy in highschool – but he was also too cool for that. He liked to think that he was more special than superficial, and that his good-looking facial feature never outshone his charming personalities. So he went from girls crushing on him in middle school, to puppy loves in high school, then by the time he got to college, everything was an option. He enjoyed guys’ companies too, especially bisexual guys like Taehyun and Seungyoon, the musicians from Music department. [He almost dated these two at the same time – but the three were also best friends. A three-some was something that almost but never was. It was incest-y somehow]. He never went “full gay” – for reasons probably different from what Jinwoo, a senior from Performance studies department who specialized in drag performance, suggested. “I think you are still holding on to that slippery boundary of normativity. I don’t think you like women. I think you are just afraid you are going to lose that precious ticket back to being a boring ass normal dude.” Way to reject bisexuality, sunbae. He told Jinwoo that day, which resulted in the pretty guy refusing to ever blow him (in drag) again. But Minho didn’t care much – he won’t ever be “fully gay” if that means he is going to forget that bisexual people exist too. Bisexual guys and their mutual identity helped the relationships between him and them remain drama-free – except when Taehyun dumped him for being “such an egocentric ass” while Seungyoon called him “vintage vinyl records banger.” He minded neither those nicknames nor the breakups, and jumped straight to the next relationship.

The last nickname that Clesias gave him, “fuckboy,” was a very contemporary one, he thought. It emerges in such a weird moment when telecommunication and social medias became too dominant in his generation’s lives. Asking his parents and they would have no idea what a fuckboy is, except that it _really_ sounds like Minho. But that also wasn’t an option– his parents cut all ties with him when he was a senior in college. He went against his parents’ wish of him to be a doctor, took a bunch of student loan and applied for a private liberal art college instead, majoring in Visual Arts. And also, he screwed the Department’s chair’s son. And got expelled. [He managed to come back and finished his degree somehow – but it was irrelevant because the expensive art degree didn’t turn him into a money making machine; he still work three jobs and making art became a luxurious hobby.] Also the son, Lee, turned out to be a trans-woman. (She wanted to be called Lily now, and Minho begged her to be more creative. He had at least five Lilies in his phone and didn’t want to risk mistaking them. It didn’t matter, because Lily, with her pre-opted man leg, kicked him out of her fancy studio near the beach).

Nevertheless, Lily’s newly found identity marked him as pansexual no less, but he didn’t know how to explain to his religious and old-traditional parents who thought he was possessed by the devil. Bless their naïve heart – they are a Christ-loving traditional middle-aged Korean couple who met each other through arranged marriage – what else were they going to do? Mino thinks hard about it, and chose to respect his parent’s opinions about him. Still, if the devil is already summoned to represent the severity of being gay (which is not even, because _for the love of God, he also loves all kinds of other people)_ , who else would his parent call if he go back home and said, “guess what omma and appa, let me introduce to you a magical idea that biological genital doesn’t determine someone’s gender and sexuality. For example, omma, just because you have a vagina doesn’t mean you have to be a woman, or to love appa. You didn’t have to give birth to me either; it’s totally your choice. By the way the boy I screwed really is a woman so you’re good.” _Imagine that._ In all honesty, perhaps he didn’t want to put all the jokes down and deal with his family’s homophobic and transphobic tendency just yet. One of these days, when he gets old enough to stop pretending that having your families rejecting the person you are and calling you names because of who you are attracted to is not a big deal, he will have to come and talk to them. But not then, when he was barely twenty eight and all he had was a bunch of unstable relationships and a vague idea of who he wants to be. He could not go to his family to ask for them to believe in him if he doesn’t figure out just yet who he intrinsically is – then he thought to himself – straight people really have it easy. They don’t have to make excuses nor convince anybody to let them be. He could bring Clesias, or any other girl he dated, to a family dinner, and his parents would think that he’d become ‘normal’ – and he will fail them again because heteronormativity is such a lie.

That was the reason why after breaking things up with Clesias, for reasons he honestly couldn’t remember, he went straight to the army to serve despite having a couple more years, without even telling his family. Which is also why Minho finds himself temporarily homeless at this moment when the military lets him go – he doesn’t have a partner, a family, nor a friend to come back to. Seoul night welcomes him back with all the streetlights and crowded stores, with all the traffic noises without the human voices - all the gloriousness and solitude of the city life that he can never afford to leave behind. He sits on the bench by the street and starts going through the contacts in his phone. He passed through Clesias just like the fuckboy that he was – he didn’t talk to her again after leaving two years ago. It makes no sense to call her up now. What’s more, he doesn’t have any excuses to pull. He still had the five Lilies on his phone, but God knows who is the one that chased him down the street accusing him of cheating and who is the one that keyed his car in an attempt to make him pay more attention to her. In the end, Minho decided to call Lily – she will literally _kill_ him if she knows he named her as LeeHee on his phone. It is basically the same name, except that it might have belonged to a dog of someone he used to date.

“Good evening. Who’s this?” Minho can’t quite realize the voice answering the phone. Hormone replacement therapy must have worked wonder. The last time he talked to her she still has to shave every morning and her feminine voice sounds, at best, like a really, _really_ gay dialect. “Is this phone number still owned by Lily?” He hears a gasp from the other line. “Oh you have gotta be kidding me. This motherfucker..,” the other says under their breath before yelling, “Song Fuckboy Minho???”

“I take it as you have deleted my phone number.” He brings his professional smile on even though nobody is there to see. Also, it might have been Lily who called him a fuckboy and simultaneously kicked him out of her studio and not Clesias.

“I kicked you out of my studio too while we’re at it. What’s up?” Minho clicks his tongue to show his approval for all the changes in her voice. “Damn, your voice sounds smexy now, Lily.”

“Thanks, fucker. Get to the business.”

“I just got out of service.” Minho knows there is no other way to deal with Lily other than keeping it real. “I don’t have anywhere to stay or anyone to call, and I want to hear a familiar voice.”

“Oh.” From the other line, Lily’s voice softens. “So you served? That’s why for the last two years Clesias and I couldn’t find you. You don’t just disappear on us like that, fuckboy.”

“How do you know Clesias?” Minho raises his eyebrows in awe. He imagines the scenario in which all his exes build an organization. They would totally name it “Anti-Fuckboy Organization” or something of the sort, with Clesias being the president and Lily the head of the board committee, with at least twenty members. He almost laughs out loud at the thought.

“After you went MIA on her, she contacted the whole world to find you. She found me to ask if I knew where you went. And I told her we were done six years before she was even in the picture. Long story short – she is my roommate now.”

Dang. Minho curses inside his head. There goes his option of staying over Lily’s.

“Do you need a place to stay? We moved to a two bedrooms, you can have the living room.” Lily asks. “Not the best scenario though.” Minho doesn’t want to imagine living together with his _two_ exes, one in which he pulled an MIA, the other being the reason why he got kicked out of college and disowned by his family. Also, she personally threw his stuff out the door. “But I think you should hit Seunghoon up to see if he got a spare room.”“Who?” Minho asks again.“Seunghoon. Lee Seunghoon. You don’t remember him?” Lily’s voice sounds surprised. “Seunghoon hyung, I mean, oppa, our sunbae from the Theatre department?” Minho tilted his head, trying to remember. “Dude, you hooked up with him, like, a few times.”

“I must have been on some strong shit,” Minho sighs. “I can’t remember a damn thing.”

“I’m not surprised. Anyway, hit him up. Text me if you can’t find his number.”

“Thanks so much, Lily.” He genuinely says.

“Which I doubt, because I’m pretty sure you still have the other five Lilies’ number. You never even cared to delete anything.”Lily continues, and Minho regrets his emotions really quickly.

“No prob, fuckboy.” She keeps things short and sweet. “And welcome back, Minho.”

Minho must admit, after all, it is actually nice to hear a familiar person calling your name. He feels bad for not swinging by to visit Clesias and Lily, but remains certain in his decisions. He is curious as to how Lily looks like now – when she was still male-presenting, she wasn’t the most flamboyant gay dude. She wouldn’t pass as straight because she didn’t want to, but she was also not easy to _clock_. May the androgyny follow her through, Mino thinks. It would be strange to ever meet Lily again and see her all princessy and shit.

“But why do I need to call the Seunghoon person though?” Minho asks without ever getting the answer. Lily hangs up right after having the last words like she always did – how could he ever forget that’s the kind of fucking asshole she is. “That was weird,” Minho mumbles as he starts walking while continuing to search for a Lee Seunghoon on his phone. He doesn’t find anything, but decides not to bother Lily again. Minho will just get a drink somewhere before spending the night at a sauna room.


	2. Chapter 2

 

  
**two**

 

When Minho reaches Nightfall, a bar near the neighborhood where he used to frequent back in the day, it is half pass ten already. Quite literal, he thinks, the pub’s name.On top of a building, but not quite fancy – it is indeed a strange scene. Upon his entrance, a man in bartender uniform grins as he greets Minho:

“Good evening. Welcome to Nightfall, please take a seat anywhere you like.”

Quite strange for a pub to welcome people like that. Minho takes a random seat right at the bar and look around. It’s the day before Christmas; he wonders why the place is not packed. Perhaps everyone has a place to go. The same man who has just greeted him at the door shows up once again behind the bar:

“Can I get you anything to drink? Do you need a minute?”

Minho studies the menu written by color chalks on the blackboard on the wall behind the man for a couple minutes.

“Do you have any suggestions? Haven't been in a while.”

“Been a long time since you’re back to Seoul, it seems.” The bartender keeps his constant smile as he goes through the list. Mino is too busy studying his smile; he doesn’t even pay attention to the comment. “Are you feeling alcoholic, or you’re good with cocktails and wine?”

“I’m feeling adventurous. Is soju an option?” Minho shrugs; his answer seems to make the bartender giggle. It doesn’t feel too bad – it’s been a while since Minho can freely flirts with a stranger without having to be cautious. Korean military is absolutely not where you exercise your liberties and sexual freedom. It is not a bad thing either; the bartender has the exact body type that Minho find attractive – muscular, athletic but lean. Minho only stole a quick glance at him earlier; his long legs complimented by skinny black pants and the button-up white shirt with black streak around the collar makes it clear that this man’s physique is going to give Minho a hard time focusing on anything else. He tries to read the name tag but unable to, the pub is too dark.

“But you don’t want soju though, valued customer.” The man says. “How about some special cocktails? If you buy one, the other is on the house.”

“Amaze me then, with your best shot.” Minho’s eyes squint as he shows the perfect smile, “Mr….?” Such a lame move to ask for a name, but Minho doesn’t really worry. It’s subtle enough; if the guy is straight, he will just think Minho is being a bro. Otherwise, it’s pretty clear that he is sending a shit ton of signals to the man. Plus, he is confident in his gaydar – try being attracted to the same sex in Korea for a few years and you can clock one from across the district. Plus, he’s Song Minho, and quite confidently speaking, people don’t reject him. [Being dumped afterwards, however, is another expertise that he totally mastered by now.] To answer the eagerness that evidently shows in his face, the bartender just smiles:

“Lee Seunghoon.”

Minho slowly repeats the name he heard.

“Lee… Seunghoon?”

“Lee Seunghoon.” The other firmly says again, before he starts putting different types of alcohol into a metal cup. “I’m going to make you one of the special cocktails for tonight.”

Minho tries to observe the guy again, but he has no recollection. The guy, now Lee Seunghoon, looks a bit taller than him. His hair on top of the undercut was divided 4/6, slicked back with a few pieces of bang down. _Classy and messy_ , such as my type, Mino thinks to himself as he secretly enjoys the view – recognizing this person or not is not that big of a deal. You can always relearn the name but you can’t always rekindle the feel, so what if he used to hook up with this guy like Lily suggested – tonight he seems like a totally new, and exciting, person.

“Don’t I know you before?” Minho asks again, in an attempt to both collect Lee Seunghoon’s stories and flirt with him, in case the guy doesn’t remember him either. “You seem very familiar somehow.”

“Valued customer, you shouldn’t lie like that. I don’t think I look like anyone you have met.” The man chuckles as he shakes the mixture in shaker. The way his lips both curved and pressed into a thin light showing the slight dimples on his cheeks and the way he tilts his head while looking away from the shaker on his hand intrigues Minho more than he wants to admit.

“Oh, why would you think so?” Minho asks while smiling; his upper body leaning on top of the bar table unconsciously reaches a little bit closer to where the man is standing. “You can’t be so sure of someone if you have never met them. As you just suggested.”

“I’m sure you agree with me, valued customer.”

“It’s Song Minho. C’mon, you know me.” Minho decides to go bold. He will be screwed if in fact this person standing in front of him starts asking him about their mutual life. Because, fuck, how the hell did he even forget this exquisite person if they ever, _ever_ hooked up. Minho blames all the hyungs in the department, who somehow got access to unlimited weed and all kinds of LSD, for this very moment. That must be the only reason why he cannot remember anything about this guy. Dang, _of all the things I could forget_.

“Here is your drink.” The bartender smiles as he pours the reddish-pink liquid, which smells like heaven, into a highball glass. Minho gets distracted for a moment; his attention was wholly grabbed by the drink being presented to him. “What is this made of if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Charbay, Barcadi, Angostura bitters, and a tad lemon juice.” Seunghoon’s right hand carefully put down the glass in front of Mino; his fingers slowly move up the long glass before finally letting go. Minho thinks of _indescribable things_ when that image comes to view. He clears his throat and solemnly observes the drink:

“Mm. Explains the freshness fragrance. Why is it pink?”

“I used the pomegranate Charbay vodka, it’s to fit with the name of the cocktail.” Seunghoon starts cleaning the part of the table where he just made the drink. It looks clean, yet Seunghoon keeps diligently wiping it with a towel.

“Which is?” Minho mumbles. He is totally mesmerized by the sparkling color and the fragrance exudes from the drink.

“I’m lonely tonight.” Seunghoon whispers.

 

 

Suddenly, Minho feels his heart sinks. He stays silent and observes the drink on his hand carefully before holding it up to take a sip. It’s sweet, sour, with a bitter aftertaste. The flavor melting inside his mouth makes him think of the glamorousness of the streetlights and all the hasty sounds that he came across today on his way. He thinks of the dark alleys where he intentionally chose to walk in order to avoid the crowd with people who have a place to return. He thinks of his mother’s tearful eyes and his father’s silence and the house he hasn’t been back in eight years; he thinks of Clesias and the way she stood at the door looking at him leaving; he thinks of the red needle spot under the belly of a male-bodied Lily, whose first hormonal therapy is a syringe full of estrogen and how that made her cry. He thinks of all the sad boys that came home with him but no one stayed, because it was all games and fun until they realized that all Minho had to offer was his empty shelf, buried underneath all the stupid jokes and heartless apologies. He thinks of how he had disappointed everyone in his life – and if, if, _if the ones who chose to make him from scratch would not take him now that he has a full body and a soul_ , how dare anyone expect him to love wholeheartedly and passionately, when on the tips of his tongue the taste of abandonment lingers like a lover’s last breath.

It’s hard to ever acknowledge that your first failed attempt to love always lay with you parents.

His life has always been too crowded to stop and take a deep breath; all the faces and voices fast forward on his mind as Minho downs half the glass. “Ah, it’s cold.” He says when he put the drink down. For a moment, he thinks it is okay to give up the cheap flirt. In moments like this, memories become very unforgiving, and Minho cannot bear the sounds of his own voice. True communication only emerges out of questions and never answers. Maybe a little bit of self-indulgent stories is fine, but never, ever lies. Across the bar counter, Seunghoon stops circling the towel on the table that had already become spotless.

 


	3. Chapter 3

  **three**  
  
  
  
“Seoul wasn’t what I remembered it to be.” Minho said, after keeping his silence which last way longer than the time needed to finish his first drink. “Or maybe I’m just romanticizing this shitty city while I was away.”  
  
  
Lee Seunghoon looks at him, then says, “It’s not the place, it’s what’s in your heart.”  
  
  
“What do you know?”  
  
  
“I can tell.” Seunghoon shrugs. “I’m well-versed in lost boys, runaways, and the unfits.” Minho raises one of his eyebrows at the comment. “Plus,” he adds, “just like every other cities, Seoul isn’t kind to a lot of us. Neither is this country.”  
  
  
“You know, that’s what I always thought.” Mino lowers his voice. “The right-wingers are dominating our politics, monopoly capitalist corporations run rampant, and we’re under so much of U.S. militarism presence in this country. Makes me think that all the cries about Japanese occupation is just an attempt to rewrite history of our own imperialist agenda. Of course comfort women should demand justice from Japanese government,” Mino scoffs, “but hell, we treat our women like objects in our own society. We treated groups of different sexual orientations like diseases. Not to mention the xenophobia and racism.”  
  
  
“You should stay a little uninformed. It is less exhausted that way.” Seunghoon has moved on to clean the glasses hung above the counter. They exchange silent looks, and Minho knows he can continue sharing his thoughts.  
  
  
“I wish I can. I hate everything that goes on in our society, and the way people just sweep it under the rug.”  
  
  
Seunghoon stops his hands. “That’s why you went to the military early? To escape? Doesn’t sound logical.”  
  
  
“You’re right. I was in a second teenage rebellious phase. But how did you know I went there?”  
  
  
“You smell of it.”  
  
  
“It being?”  
  
  
“The stench of hypermasculinity and nationalism.” Seunghoon’s unexpected answer stuns Minho for a second. He looks at Seunghoon; the bartender’s face remains emotionless and glares back.  
  
  
“Ah, decolonial feminism.” Minho laughs. “This sure escalates quickly. I hope you are not testing my knowledge on social theories now. I might disappoint you.”  
  
  
“You know those theories should be commonsense.”  
  
  
“You are right.” Minho sighs. “The majority of the public has no idea. I spent the last two years in the military. Witness first-handedly how the military is pretty much state-sanctioned violence. They put so much money in this not because they want us to become soldiers – they already have professional soldiers and troops. They just want to brainwash us about Korean exceptionalism and nationalism. Did you know that for the next five years they are increasing the annual rate by 232 trillion won? That’s a seven percent increase. Can’t remember the last time I got a %0.5 raise.”  
  
  
Minho keeps talking. The more he talks, the angrier he gets. Angry, and exhausted. What a very loveless world; this is the kind of time when being ignorant is not blissful anymore. Ah, but he can’t really be ignorant, can he? How else can he make sense of all the denial and rejection he, and people like him, got from the world? That day, when Lily suddenly kicked him out of her house, she said never wanted to see him again. Minho had only looked at her hormonal pills when she wasn’t here. Later, in one of those messy drunk calls at night, Lily cried and told him that she misses him – but he can never come back. Minho was told he reminded her of when she was a man and she hated herself for it. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m a terrible human being, I must have not loved you, and I won’t love you, Minho, if that makes me hate myself again.” Minho dearly wished she would forget this conversation when she wakes up the next day. “It’s not your fault,” he had said, “hate me if that makes your life a little bit easier. I can take it.” He didn’t tell Lily that the one he loved wasn’t the one she wanted to be. And Clesias, she could have been the perfect person – but she sometimes glared at his homeboys with those eyes that looked identical to that of his mother – curious, wary, and afraid. Maybe that’s why Minho wanted to stay – to diligently explain over and over again to her to make up for the conversations he never bothered to have with his mother. But god, he was exhausted of explaining himself. “You couldn’t even say that you only love me.” Minho stayed silent when Clesias yelled at him. For once, he didn’t make any excuse for himself – there simply wasn’t any. “I don’t know what it means to be you and to love like you – but I cannot control myself. I am scared whenever I see you with another guy.” She whispered to him during sex once, “so fuck me like your other guys, fuck me like I am them.” There was no other guy, I am pansexual but I am monogamous. I can be with anyone but I chose to be with you. Those words were never enough for her but they were too much for him to repeat, so he said instead, “Sure.” She pushed him out of her and started crying. He walked to the living room, locked the door, put his record on the highest volume possible, and spent the whole night listening to Clesias banging on the door. “I should have known you are a fuckboy!”  
  
  
  
Suffering is never, ever personal. He’s never just lonely because of a failed relationship, being misunderstood, or alone; he is forced to be lonely because this world doesn’t provide him enough vocabulary to explain to the people he holds dear to his heart – hey, this is me, this is who I am, there is nothing wrong with it. Loneliness is forced upon him because the world requires him to tell other people to forgive the sins he doesn’t remember committing. His solitude is apparent because he has used all the reasoning yet people around him still back off, eyes filled with horror, scared of the stories that would never happen to them, trying to mold him into something they are but he is not. He is lonely, because as human beings in modern time, we are ultimately lonely: do we not stab the ones so close to us with the cruelty of our tongues, and the effort we put into curing the people who we thought are devious is not that much different from wishing death upon them. And we have become terribly at communicating our differences or finding a common ground, because this world lives off the pain we cause each other. The system we are living in wants us to believe that there is a definite destination, only achieved through a right way to live – and if we just conform to what it tries to teach us, we will be awarded with success, happiness, and love. But like a recycle machine, promised to take care of the indestructible industrial waste, all it does is sucking in one thing, crashing it into pieces, and spitting out the toxic waste in the shape of a different object. As people going through this unforgiving system, the lucky ones become conditioned to madness and the rest became incredibly insane.  
  
  
Minho finishes the second and the third cocktail then changes to beer while the words silently leave his mouth and fill the room with the weight of the burdens he had buried inside. He has managed to tell Seunghoon almost all the stories about his love life without making it about his family. It is never a good idea to tell a stranger that your parents didn’t want you.

 

\+ + +

 

“So, that was it. I left the apartment, quit my jobs, joined the military.”

“What kind of jobs were you doing then, before serving?” Seunghoon serves more beer as Minho holds out his glass. He doesn’t keep eye contact with Minho anymore; the atmosphere is somewhat tense because of the conversation they are having. It doesn’t take Minho two seconds to realize that.

“Well, I work different jobs. A nice way to say that I’m not financially stable. But I’m sure you know.”

 

“Yeah. Our generation inherited a shitty planet, scarce resources, and fucked up politics.” Seunghoon nods his head.

 

“But the military was also as fabulous as I could get anywhere else, hunty.” Minho changes to the gay dialect that he rarely uses, attempting to crack a joke to change the mood when he realizes he takes up too much space. He doesn’t know what becomes of him; he shouldn’t have shared too much of himself to someone he just met. Lee Seunghoon might have been the same person he was thinking of – _how he dearly wishes_ , but even so, Minho must have not really known him then. If their conversations were like this, he wouldn’t have had forgotten. Just how did this guy get him so at ease communicating like this?

 

“What do you mean?” Seunghoon looks slightly surprised at the change in Minho’s voice. To be honest, Minho never really uses this kiki-voice, afraid of those who would reduce gayness into that one annoying stereotype. [All gay men do not talk like they have some permanent stick up their ass and bad smell under their nose, they just love to sound different from the boring ass straight counterparts, thank you very much]. But he does every now and then in close circle and trusted friends. Or when he really, really wants someone to laugh at his failed attempt at gay slangs. “I get to spend my time with naked tanned men who, thanks to our homophobic but homosocial culture, will swing their willies at me without a second thought.”

 

“Gross.” Seunghoon almost immediately knits his eyebrows at the image. His body language changes naturally; he stands a little taller with his shoulders arched back, his arms folded at the hip, hands touching elbows. Minho smiles at the not-so-subtle change in the bartender’s pose.

 

“Agreed. I don’t get why straight men are so obsessed with their dicks.” Minho stops for a second, then slyly continues. “They don’t even _know_ good blowjobs.” Seunghoon quickly covers his mouth, trying to hold back the laughters. He looks to the side as he struggles to not laugh out loud. Minho suddenly feels warm inside – a weird, tingly sensation of being understood by a person who probably shares a mutual social position. All the dark thoughts and troubles seem to just dissolve like they were never there a minute ago. Seunghoon fixes his collar and straighten up his vest as he finally calms down:

 

“Well, phallocentric tendency is always less about dicks and all about dominance, just like how sexuality is never about sex and always about defining what it is and how it can be done. But I’m sure you already know.”

 

“Okay, I gotta ask this one thing,” Minho puts down the half empty glass of beer down and looks at Seunghoon in awe, “I’m really glad that somehow you speak this type of language, but you really sound like one of those who graduated from a fancy liberal art college, the kind that required you to read Judith Butler and Jacques Derrida.”

 

“That’s because I am.” Seunghoon shrugs. “I ended up in debt, but wouldn’t trade the experiences.”

 

“How come? Because of education quality?”

 

“Nah. Because the hyungs in my campus for some reasons had access to unlimited amount of weed and LSD that we spent most of  
the times high out of our mind and talked politics.”

 

“Dang, we must have been in the same parties. I made it out of there mostly alive but never the same anymore. Except all we do was vomiting sentences that do not register in the repertoire of human language.”

 

“That is actually equivalent to talking politics when high. Or just talking about politics in general.”

 

Minho swears if he was not slightly buzzed, he will gather the whole city round and make them applause. How much more brilliant can this guy get? This will go down into history as the definition of politics. Or at least make into an entry of urban dictionary: _/p/ politics – equivalent of taking LSD and trying to language at the same time._

 

“You are so smart and so damn funny.” Minho’s compliment sounds slightly on the desperate side. He regretfully adds. “Sorry, it sounds better in my head.” Seunghoon smiles back:

 

“No, it’s fine. Thank you. I’m glad it makes you feel better.”

 

Minho looks at Seunghoon and realizes at the same time that the bartender has been trying to cheer him up. He holds up the glass again but Seunghoon shakes his head. He gets the hint and asks for a cup of cold water instead, which the bartender gladly serves.

 

“What department were you in back then that you had to take those classes?”

 

“Theatrical and performance studies.” Mino is sure he found the one he needs. It is Christmas after all – and terrible as he is, he should have counted in god to bring him to the right place at the right time. “We read the radical stuff as parts of the theoretical approaches to performing.” Seunghoon explains. “The professor was a radical queer woman; she taught us a thing or two about the gendered performances. I really appreciate it – as a dick-holder who benefits of male privilege, I’m not a fan of phallocentrism at all.”

 

“As for me though,” Minho smirks, “my phallocentric tendency is always about the dicks and never about dominance. Not applied, however, when vaginas are at the scene.”

 

“Oh.” Seunghoon raises his eyebrows. “So… both ways?”

 

“One way.” Minho smiles. “Human way. What are you doing after this?”

 

“Nothing. But I’m not going home with you.”

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

  **four**

 

 

 

Minho’s smile freezes upon the cold answer. Taken aback, he doesn’t know what to do but pulling out some cash from his pocket and leaves them on the table. He almost drops them to the floor in the process.

“Keep the change and have a nice rest of the night.”

Seunghoon grabs his wrist before he can turn around, but let go right away when he looks back. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to touch you without permission.” Minho glares at him without saying anything.

“But you have had quite a few drinks. You should wait a bit till you sober up before going home.” Seunghoon gives him another cold water and Minho feels rather stupid about his abrupt action. He receives the glass from Seunghoon in an awkward position of half-standing, half-sitting on the bar stool. He debates whether or not to sit back or to stand up and excuse himself after drinking the water.

“The bar will close in 15 minutes – so don’t worry, I won’t keep you here for long.” Seunghoon says as he starts packing things up. It is not like he has much to do – the man manages to clean everything during the conversation. Minho looks around and realized that the lights have been turned up and the last call was around fifteen minutes ago; there is not one single soul left except him and Seunghoon.

“I think I just made myself look quite like a jerk.” Finally Minho speaks up. “For coming onto you then rudely leave when rejected.”

“Ah, short summary of what happened?” Seunghoon says as he steps out from the bar while undoing his short apron. He unbuttons the collar and starts rolling up his sleeves. “My shift is over.” He proceeds to pour himself a drink and sits next to Minho’s seat.

“I got flustered.” Minho confesses.

“Not used to rejection, it seems.” Seunghoon’s tender chuckle confuses Minho. He was so sure, just thirty seconds ago, that the man doesn’t want nothing to do with him – yet they somehow are flirting again.

“So, why?”

“Remember I told you how I can read lost boys, runaways, and the unfits very well?” Seunghoon smiles at him. “You are none of the above.” He sips from his glass. Minho waits for him to continue.

“You are just a broken-hearted boy.” He says, and looks Minho straight in the eyes. Minho unconsciously leans back. “So stop with those heartless flirts, you didn't run away to keep doing this. Plus,” Seunghoon continues, “whoever I am, you don’t even remember me.”

Minho doesn’t know what to say. He runs out of excuse – and realizing that during this whole time, his excuses had kept his self-esteem intact by convincing him that he actually got reasons to live recklessly and ruthlessly as he did. He inhales deeply and turns to face Seunghoon:

“Well, I don’t. I don’t think I forgot a lot of people, but I must have.”

“But you also remember a lot of things.”Seunghoon’s sharp-edged eyes with slightly smudged black eyeliner on the bottom lashes makes Minho think longer than he should.

“It always starts with the family.” He admits defeat.

“Ah, the family.” Seunghoon takes another sip. “Always the family that makes it or break it for queer folks.”

“Did it break you?” Minho hesitantly asks.

“No, I broke it.” Seunghoon answers while pouring himself another glass of brandy.

“How was the talk?” He asks again after the bartender puts down his drink.

“It went fast. There was no crying, no yelling, no begging. My mom had passed away since I was young so I was the only family. My dad was older, so he didn’t understand. I wanted to hide so it wouldn’t make him sad, but he found out through the nosy neighbor. I was thrown out when I was fourteen.”

“Fourteen.” Minho repeats. “How did you even survive?”

“What do you think?” Seunghoon drifts his gaze from elsewhere back to meet Minho’s. Ah. Minho finds himself amazingly embarrassed because of his own question. Of course, even though the South Korean public remains oblivious to how LGBT youth became homeless, he should know better. Even the most prominent LGBT youth-oriented programs tip toe around the fact that LGBT youths are more likely to end up in prostitution, sex services, and other unsafe illegal practices. There has been no research done on LGBT youth drop-outs and runaway, they say, they don’t know what kind of lives these youngsters will face, or why they are on the street. It really takes a genius not to figure out how a young person can survive on their own without food or money in a society that simultaneously criminalize sexuality and sexualize younger bodies.

“Back then, the gay sex tourism industry in Itaewon wasn’t as popular as it is now.” Seunghoon says. “Not that it is a good thing. All I’m saying is sex workers are never protected by laws, especially the underage, and it was an ideal situation for predators and abusive customers. At least the tourists who came for sex tourism weren’t always dealing with denial and self-hatred, they just want some good times.”

“I’m sorry, Seunghoon-ssi.” Minho whispers.

“I had it easier than other homeless folks. I found myself a sugar daddy.” Seunghoon continues. “He adopted me, that tells you how messy it gets. I get to play a gay Lolita.” Minho puts his right hand on top of Seunghoon’s. The bartender takes it into his palm and slightly grips his fingers. “But the man wasn’t too terrible. At least I get to finish high school before leaving him for good and pursuing higher education. That’s better than a lot of other scenarios; I could still be working as a gay sex worker or in host club for straight women, and when I get older, all I will get is occasional paid hookups in bathhouses. You know the drill.”

It’s clear that Seunghoon’s ideas of one night stands and fast-forward hookups are really different from Minho’s. He feels utterly ashamed of his stupid act a while ago.

“I guess I developed Stockholm syndrome.” Seunghoon pulls out from his pocket a pack of red Marlboro and offers Minho one. Minho slightly shook his head but get the lighter ready anyway; Seunghoon leans his head toward Minho to light the tip of the cigarette. “That is probably why I took a bunch of loans to pursue a degree in that expensive institution. I wanted to become better, and bigger than him – it becomes really easy to forgive people when you’re superior. I wanted to forgive him that much. The guy who took care of me was a professor of philosophy. When we were not having sex, we would cosplay father and son. He would read poems to me, the really beautiful ones that talk about gay love and gay identity. You see, am I supposed to hate him for screwing an underage – albeit that child was me, or should I be grateful because he took care of me when no one else did, and taught me that my existence is beautiful?”

Minho takes the cigarette from Seunghoon’s hand and inhales deeply. Seunghoon closes his eyes as if he tries to reminisce the past. “My favorite one was ‘Mayakovsky’ by a New York painter and poet named Frank O’Hara. It goes like this.”

 

 

_My heart’s aflutter!_  
I am standing in the bath tub  
crying. Mother, mother  
who am I? If he  
will just come back once  
and kiss me on the face  
his coarse hair brush  
my temple, it’s throbbing!

 

 

Minho exhales, both the held breath and the smoke inside his lungs. He continues where Seunghoon leaves off. He somehow knows this poem by heart.

 

 

_I love you. I love you,_  
but I’m turning to my verses  
and my heart is closing  
like a fist.

 

 

Seunghoon softly smiles. “Minho-ssi. As queer people, we have spent our lives _quietly waiting for the catastrophe of our personality to seem beautiful again_.* It might take one’s parents to make one, but they don’t have to be the one to break one.”

“No, they don’t.” Minho dazedly repeats after Seunghoon. “What happened to your dad afterwards?”

“He died recently.” Seunghoon says emotionlessly. “The last thing he said to me was, ‘I hope you rot in hell’.” Minho drops the cigarette butt into the ashtray. His index finger nail smells like burnt wood.

“But I am not, you know, I am not.” Seunghoon pats his pants to get rid of the splattered ashes sticking on the fabric. Minho watches him standing up and grabbing his bag. “I might be struggling and working a job that more often than not remind me of my past when customers harmlessly hit on me.” Minho lowers his head once again. “But I’m alive, and _I am myself again_. And so are you.”

 

 

 

 

  
**after all**

 

Minho steps out of the bar to the rooftop, following Seunghoon’s hand gesture.

 

In front of him, Seoul is as beautiful and cold as ever. It doesn’t snow that night, but he doesn’t miss much. Thousands of tiny sparkling dots of color running from where he stands till the end of space, where they all become parts of the sky, make up for the loss. It is officially Christmas day, and in just two hours, the sun will rise up again. People will come on the street, and they will talk to each other– albeit the conversations are digitalized into binary codes on their computers, tablets, or smartphones. There will be conversations between families, amongst strangers; there will be words of love spoken, as much as there will be fights and separations. And the world isn’t going to be a better place just because people talk to each other. But even if the superpowers of the world are waging wars on borders and lands all over the global south, may us all whose existences are marked as less desirable not hone a war against ourselves.

 

 

When Minho holds Seunghoon’s hands tightly and pulled him into a warm hug that afternoon as they say goodbye in front of Seunghoon’s house, he mumbles a thousands of “thank yous” into his ears, to which Seunghoon replies by tightening his fingers on Mino’s back. They hold each other dearly like the closest of friends, like lifetime partners, or just two people finding warmth in strangers’ kindness. Last night, when Minho took the staircases off the rooftop to get out of Nightfall after wishing him a happy holiday, Seunghoon asked Minho if he needed a place to be for the rest of the night. Minho had said, “I needed a place to return to,” and Seunghoon smiled at him, “that’s something you have to make yourself.” Minho had nodded his head and followed Seunghoon, Christmas streetlights above their heads, traffic noises coming from the main streets became more and more fainted as they walked through many dark alleys. And when he finally got there, he realized he had made a full trip back to where he started.

“So you were the one who took over this apartment after Clesias.”

Seunghoon looked at him:

“ _No. I took it from a guy who shares the same name as_ _I_.”

Minho didn’t know whatelse to do but laugh.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_I love you. I love you,_  
but I’m turning to my verses  
and my heart is closing  
like a fist.

 

 

Words! Be  
sick as I am sick, swoon,  
roll back your eyes, a pool,

 

 

and I’ll stare down  
at my wounded beauty  
which at best is only a talent  
for poetry.

 

 

 

 _End._  


 

 

 

 

 

_[* italic parts of the dialogue are from the poem.]_

 

 

**notes**

 

  This fic came to me at first as a late-minute idea for Xmas. Now that Xmas is gone for a few days, it is finally finished. It didn’t progress the way I expected, to say the least. It is realer than I expected myself to write, and covered a lot of real issues that I almost feel like I’m writing an essay. Hope it doesn’t turn you off – but again, homoeroticism is all game and fun until we are reminded that queer folks in fact exist and face many types of oppressions and discrimination. I hope this is a fun but also an educational read for anyone who made it to the end.

Read statistics about LGBT youth [here](http://www.10mag.com/dding-dong-safe-space-for-lgbt-youths/) and [here](https://www.globalgiving.org/pfil/15426/projdoc.pdf).  
Read about [male prostitutions](http://thegrandnarrative.com/2011/03/13/korean-host-bars-male-prostitution/), [gay sex workers](http://www.utopia-asia.com/seoumasa.htm),[ sauna spas](http://www.npr.org/2015/10/06/440549964/spa-hookups-korean-parents-and-coming-out-on-screen-q-a-with-filmmaker-andrew-ah). The last one is a good read on spa hookups as an intersect between Korean culture and queer identity.

Full poem of [Mayakovski](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/238460), the biography of [Frank O’hara](http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/frank-ohara), and the [influence ](https://newyorkschoolpoets.wordpress.com/2015/02/12/mayakovsky-frank-ohara-and-the-intimate-yell/)he took from Mayakovski (Russian poet whose penname was used as the title of the poem.  



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